Turtle's Fairy Tale

hwntunda · Jul 27, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
I like idiot proof... I'm pretty intelligent, but geez that Red Sea stuff is like reading hieroglyphics written by a 2 year old.

like my chart!

SashimiTurtle · Jul 27, 2018

Brew12 said:
To me, it makes no sense. Water volume has little to do with alk and calc consumption. It's all about the amount of coral growth. Redsea uses very generic "typical" numbers. I don't find them accurate.

I get the blue section on the right is what I measured my tank at, and I get the gray boxes up top is where my target is, or there abouts... but I have no idea what g/100L is in normal measurements. Grams are what I measured the powder in. It is now in liquid form, or part of it at least... shouldn't I be using ml/25g(100L) now instead of grams?

Like I said, Red Sea forked up with their dosing chemicals. Completely asinine.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 27, 2018

hwntunda said:
like my chart!

Hahaha, all I needed to know is you measured your tank on vertical slices, instead of horizontal like in the BRS videos on the YouTubes. After that I completely understood your chart.

Brew12 · Jul 27, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
I get the blue section on the right is what I measured my tank at, and I get the gray boxes up top is where my target is, or there abouts... but I have no idea what g/100L is in normal measurements. Grams are what I measured the powder in. It is now in liquid form, or part of it at least... shouldn't I be using ml/25g(100L) now instead of grams?

Like I said, Red Sea forked up with their dosing chemicals. Completely asinine.

1ml of water is 1 gram. When you dissolve stuff in the water it changes, but I doubt they take that into account. You should be good using 1 gram as 1ml for their chart.

Just a horrible way of doing it.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 27, 2018

Brew12 said:
1ml of water is 1 gram. When you dissolve stuff in the water it changes, but I doubt they take that into account. You should be good using 1 gram as 1ml for their chart.

Just a horrible way of doing it.

Ah ha, and there we have it. I know a pint is a pound... at least at a specific gravity of 1.0. I just never use metric so I dont know the conversions off the top of my head.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 27, 2018

I dosed 1ml of whatever concentration this stuff ended up at 10pm. Just to be on the safe side, don't want to cause a spike. I'll let that circulate for another 10 minutes and test alk again at 10:30. I have roughly 10x flow thru my sump so that should be plenty of time. I'm also going to go ahead and order the BRS 2 part so it can start making the trip south east.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 27, 2018

Alk is now 6.2dKH on the Hanna checker, twice. Going to dose one more ml of this alk solution and call it a night.

Going to two different LFS in the morning. One on a frozen food run and another on a social visit. I'm not looking to buy any coral, but anything is possible.

Brew12 · Jul 27, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
Alk is now 6.2dKH on the Hanna checker, twice. Going to dose one more ml of this alk solution and call it a night.

Going to two different LFS in the morning. One on a frozen food run and another on a social visit. I'm not looking to buy and coral, but anything is possible.

Take a few days to raise it to where you want it. Large alk changes can cause serious sps stress.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 27, 2018

Brew12 said:
Take a few days to raise it to where you want it. Large alk changes can cause serious sps stress.

That's the plan. I'd like a goal of around 8.5, so it'll take me a few days to get it up that high. Probably won't dose any more than 2ml of this stuff per day. I'll test again here at 11ish and in the morning before I leave. Reageant is $8, SPS is considerably more.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 28, 2018

Alk was still 6.2 at around 11:30. I'll test in the morning and see if it changes any.

In the mean time... got feeders?

Yes, that 3 polyp trumpet is now 3.75 polyps. Few more days it'll be completely split. The acans keep getting repositioned by the conch, but they don't seem to mind. So far, he's cleaned up probably a third of the sand and only bumped the acans around. Fair trade I think, they don't seem to mind much.

siggy · Jul 28, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
I like idiot proof... I'm pretty intelligent, but geez that Red Sea stuff is like reading hieroglyphics written by a 2 year old.

ABC+ is no better

Scurvy · Jul 28, 2018

I dispised the Red Sea additives too. Mixed terribly after the 3 days of figuring how to mix it in the first place. The BRS stuff mixes well but you need to consider trace elements if the goal is less maintenance/water changes.

B-Ionic is supposedly easy to use and includes trace though never tried it.

I use Triton other methods on the Reefer and gave ATI a shot on the 40B. ATI required mixing but was strait forward and mixed well.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 28, 2018

Morning minions... Alk is 6.4dKH. Seems like 1ml of Red Sea junk equals 0.2dKH in my tank. Hopefully that scales linearly. So, with a goal of 8.5dKH and sitting at a current 6.4 we are 2.1 away from our target. It will take 10.5 doses to get to our target dKH. Dosing twice a day, by the 1st we should be where we want to be.

Slow and steady wins the race... no rabbits around here.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 28, 2018

Scurvy said:
I dispised the Red Sea additives too. Mixed terribly after the 3 days of figuring how to mix it in the first place. The BRS stuff mixes well but you need to consider trace elements if the goal is less maintenance/water changes.

B-Ionic is supposedly easy to use and includes trace though never tried it.

I use Triton other methods on the Reefer and gave ATI a shot on the 40B. ATI required mixing but was strait forward and mixed well.

Yea, that's what I need to figure out... trace. Red Sea has trace elements, but it is dosed based off of their foundation. We are very displeased with their foundation, so... ugh. A lot of people in the Charleston reef club suggested the ESV. Then others said to forget dosing and get a calcium reactor. So many options so many decisions.

Scurvy · Jul 28, 2018

Kalk?? Some swear by it as a must for an SPS system.

BRS did the math on how to add red sea trace to the Kalk dosing equation.

SashimiTurtle · Jul 28, 2018

I have kalk, and plan on dosing it like @Brew12 does. I'll look up that Red Sea trace calculator thing.

With my Ca at 475 and alk at 6.0, I gotta dose my alk up to match first. I dont think I have that much consumption to need to dose constantly yet, or I can keep up with a few manual doses a week. I also haven't really tested anything until last night so I dont know how much of what I'm using.

I have a theory that my salt wasn't mixed all that well in the bucket. I took care of that last night.

Brew12 · Jul 28, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
I have kalk, and plan on dosing it like @Brew12 does. I'll look up that Red Sea trace calculator thing.

With my Ca at 475 and alk at 6.0, I gotta dose my alk up to match first. I dont think I have that much consumption to need to dose constantly yet, or I can keep up with a few manual doses a week. I also haven't really tested anything until last night so I dont know how much of what I'm using.

I have a theory that my salt wasn't mixed all that well in the bucket. I took care of that last night.

I use the Redsea trace elements. My tank eats iron like it is going out of style. I use the other trace elements much more sparingly. Keep in mind the Fiji mud replaces trace elements as do water changes. Odds are you won't become trace element limited unless you stop doing water changes or get your tank fairly well packed with coral.